Abstract

The Geotechnical Engineering research group at James Cook University has been working closely with all the
leading mines in Australia in the area of minefills. They have carried out substantial research and consulting work on the drainage
and stress developments within hydraulic fills. The objective of this paper is to summarize their work during the past five years on
hydraulic fills. The paper will serve as a one-stop reference, pointing to relevant literature including the authors' own publications,
on various issues covering drainage and stress developments within hydraulic fills. More than 15 different hydraulic fills,
representing five major mines in Australia, were studied. Their grain size distributions and placement characteristics including
permeability, porosity and dry density were studied and comparisons were made with the limited in situ data available in the
literature. Stress development within hydraulic fills has been studied to minimize the risk associated with barricades failure. FLAC
and FLAC3D were used to model stress developments within the hydraulic fills and were compared against the approximate closed
form solutions available in the literature. A laboratory model was developed to study arching effects within the hydraulic fills.